Hawking party; courting couple (meeting of lovers); lady and youth hawking on horseback; lady with a hawk on her wrist; couple kissing; male attendant on foot; trees; dagger.
Corner terminals: crouching monsters.
Westwood 1876 and Griggs 1904-1907: France, 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Longhurst 1929: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Natanson 1951: France, c. 1320-1340.
Williamson and Davies 2014: French (Paris), c.1300-20.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Back turned with a depression for (missing) mirror.
Two line ink inscription, largely illegible but upper line includes '546'.
Object Condition
Ivory surface on back pitted. Hole drilled vertically through top for secondary suspension.
Provenance
Collection of Prince Petr Soltykoff (b. c. 1801, d. 1889): sold, Paris, Drouot, 8-10, 15-17, 22-24, 29 April and 1 May 1861, lot 356; purchased by Jacob; in the possession of John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London, by 1862: purchased from him by the Museum in 1867.
Bibliography
Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the Mediaeval, Renaissance, and more recent periods on loan at the South Kensington Museum, June 1862..., revised edition, exhibition catalogue (London, 1862), no. 135.
Inventory of the Objects in the Art Division of the Museum at South Kensington, arranged according to the dates of their acquisition (London, 1868), I, p. 8.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), pp. 83-84.
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), no. 878 (`73.331).
W. Griggs, Portfolio of Ivories [London, 1904-1907], pt. XXVII.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 384, 385, 386; II, no. 1028; III, pl. CLXXIX.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 46, pl. XLII.
J. Natanson, Gothic Ivories of the 13th and 14th Centuries (London, 1951), p. 37, fig. 43.
The Decorated page: eight hundred years of illuminated manuscripts and books, exhibition catalogue, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, May-October 1971, no. 251.
Codex Manesse, exhibition catalogue, Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, 1988, no. K26.
P. M. Carns, ‘Cutting a fine figure: costume on French Gothic Ivories’, in Medieval Clothing and Textiles, Vol. 5 (2009), pp. 55-91 (pp. 67, 76, 88).
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 192.
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